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PR 6023 
.P93 T6 
1921 
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TORTOISES 



TORTOISES 



V ^ BY 

Dk. LAWRENCE 



^ 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS SELTZER 
1921 






COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
THOMAS SELTZER, INC. 



All rights reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 



DEC 22 71 

;g)r,!.A653520 



i 



CONTENTS 

Baby Tortoise 9 

Tortoise-Shell 17 

Tortoise Family Connections 23 

Lui ET Elle 29 

Tortoise Gallantry 39 

Tortoise Shout 45 



BABY TORTOISE 



BABY TORTOISE 

You know what it is to be born alone, 
Baby tortoise! 

The first day to heave your feet little by little 

from the shell, 
Not yet awake, 

And remain lapsed on earth, 
Not quite alive. 

A tin}^ fragile, half-animate bean. 

To open j^our tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if 

it w^ould never open. 
Like some iron door; 

To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base 
And reach your skinny little neck 
And take your first bite at some dim bit of 

herbage, 
Alone, small insect, 
Tiny bright-eye. 
Slow one. 

[ 9 ] 



TORTOISES 

To take your first solitary bite 
And move on your slow, solitary hunt. 
Your bright, dark little eye, 
Your eye of a dark disturbed night, 
Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise. 
So indomitable. 



'No one ever heard you complain. 

You draw your head forward, slowly, from your 
little wimple 

And set forward, slow-dragging, on your four- 
pinned toes. 

Rowing slowly forward. 

Whither away, small bird? 

Rather like a balby working its limbs. 
Except that you make slow, ageless progress 
And a baby makes none. 

The touch of sun excites you. 

And the long ages, and the lingering chill 

Make you pause to yawn, 

[ 10 ] 



BABY TORTOISE 

Opening your impervious mouth. 

Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some 

suddenly gaping pincers ; 
Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums. 
Then close the wedge of your little mountain 

front, 
Your face, baby tortoise. 

Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn 

your head in its wimple 
And look with laconic, black eyes ? 
Or is sleep coming over you again, 
The non-life? 

You are so hard to wake. 

Are you able to wonder? 

Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of 

the first life 
Looking round 

And slowly pitching itself against the inertia 
Which had seemed invincible? 

The vast inanimate. 

And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye, 

Challenger. 



*e>^ 



[ H ] 



TORTOISES 

Nay, tiny shell-bird, 

What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must 

row against. 
What an incalculable inertia. 

Challenger, 

Little Ulysses, fore-runner. 
No bigger than my thumb-nail, 
Buon viaggio. 

All animate creation on your shoulder, 

Set forth, little Titan, under j'^our battle-shield. 

The ponderous, preponderate, 

Inanimate universe ; 

And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone. 

How vivid your travelling seems now, in the 

troubled sunshine. 
Stoic, Ulyssean atom; 
Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes. 

Voiceless little bird. 

Resting your head half out of your wimple 
In the slow dignity of your eternal pause. 
Alone, with no sense of being alone, 

[ 12 ] 



BABY TORTOISE 

And hence six times more solitary ; 

Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through 

immemorial ages 
Your little roimd house in the midst of chaos. 

Over the garden earth, 

Small bird, 

Over the edge of all things. 

Traveller, 

With your tail tucked a little on one side 

Like a gentleman in a long-skirted coat. 

All life carried on your shoulder, 
Invincible fore-runner. 



[ 13 ] 



TORTOISE-SHELL 



TORTOISE-SHELL 

The Cross, the Cross 
Goes deeper in than we know, 
Deeper into life ; 
Right into the marrow 
And through the bone. 

Along the back of the baby tortoise 

The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge, 

Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections 

Or a bee's. 

Then crossways down his sides 
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands. 

Five, and five again, and five again, 

And round the edges twenty-five little ones, 

The sections of the baby tortoise shell. 

Four, and a keystone ; 
Four, and a keystone ; 
Four, and a keystone ; 
Then twenty- four, and a tiny little keystone. 

[ 17 ] 



TORTOISES 

It needed Pythagoras to see life placing her 

counters on the living back 
Of the baby tortoise ; 
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical 

tablet, 
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but 

in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise-shell. 

The first little mathematical gentleman 
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers 
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law. 

Fives, and tens. 

Threes and fours and twelves, 

All the volte face of decimals, 

The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven. 

Turn him on his back. 

The kicking little beetle, 

And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touch- 
ing belly, 

The long cleavage of division, upright of the 
eternal cross 

And on either side count five, 

On each side, two above, on each side, two below 

The dark bar horizontal. 

[ 18 ] 



TORTOISE-SHELL 

The Cross! 

It goes right through him, the sprottling insect, 
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche, 
Through his five-fold complex-nature. 

So turn him over on his toes again ; 

Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb- 
piece, 

Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing 
head, 

Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all 
mathematics. 

The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate 
Of the baby tortoise. 

Outward and visible indication of the plan within, 
The complex, manifold involvedness of an indi- 
vidual creature 
Blotted out 

On this small bird, this rudiment. 
This little dome, this pediment 
Of all creation, 
This slow one. ' 



[ 19 ] 



TORTOISE FAMILY CONNECTIONS 



TORTOISE FAMILY CONNECTIONS 

On he goes, the little one, 
Bud of the universe. 
Pediment of life. 

Setting off somewhere, apparently. 
Whither away, brisk eggl 

His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were 

no more than droppings. 
And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were 

an old rusty tin. 

A mere obstacle. 

He veers round the slow great mound of her — 

Tortoises always foresee obstacles. 

It is no use my saying to him in an emotional 

voice : 
"This is your Mother, she laid you when you were 

an egg." 

[23 ] 



TORTOISES 

He does not even trouble to answer: "Woman, 

what have I to do with thee?" 
He wearily looks the other way, 
And she even more wearily looks another way 

still. 
Each with the utmost apathy, 
Incognizant, 
Unaware, 
Nothing. 

As for papa. 

He snaps when I offer him his offspring. 

Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him. 

Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible 

tortoise 
Being touched with love, and devoid of fatherli- 

ness. 



Father and mother. 

And three little brothers. 

And all rambling aimless, like little perambulat- 
ing pebbles scattered in the garden. 

Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old 
tins. 

[ 24 ] 



FAMILY CONNECTIONS 

Except that papa and mama are old acquaint- 
ances, of course, 

But family feeling there is none, not even the 
beginnings. 

Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless 
Little tortoise. 

Row on then, small pebble. 

Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled sun- 
shine. 
Young gayety. 

Does lie look for a companion? 

No, no, don't think it. 
He doesn't know he is alone ; 
Isolation is his birthright, 
This atom. 

To row forward, and reach himself tall on spiny 

toes. 
To travel, to burrow into a little loose earth, 

afraid of the night. 
To crop a little substance. 

To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving: 
Basta! 

[26 ] 



TORTOISES 

To be a tortoise ! 

Think of it, in a garden of inert clods 

A brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself — 

Croesus ! 

In a garden of pebbles and insects 
To roam, and feel the slow heart beat 
Tortoise-wise, the first bell sounding 
From the warm blood, in the dark-creation 
morning. 

Moving, and being himself. 

Slow, and unquestioned, 

And inordinately there, O stoic! 

Wandering in the slow triumph of his own exist- 
ence. 

Ringing the soundless bell of his presence in 
chaos. 

And biting the frail grass arrogantly, 

Decidedly arrogantly. 



[ 26 ] 



LUI ET ELLE 



LUI ET ELLE 

She is large and matronly 
And rather dirty, 

A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had 
driven her to it. 

Though what she does, except lay four eggs at 

random in the garden once a year 
And put up with her husband, 
I don't know. 

She likes to eat. 

She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny 

legs. 
When food is going. 
Oh yes, she can make haste when she likes. 

She snaps the soft bread from my hand in great 

mouthfuls. 
Opening her rather pretty wedge of an iron, 

pristine face 

[ 29 ] 



TORTOISES 

Into an enormously wide-beaked mouth 

Like sudden curved scissors, 

And gulping at more than she can swallow, and 

working her thick, soft tongue. 
And having the bread hanging over her chin. 

O Mistress, Mistress, 

Reptile mistress, 

Your eye is very dark, very bright. 

And it never softens 

Although you watch. 

She knows. 

She knows well enough to come for food, 

Yet she sees me not ; 

Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything, 

Sightful, sightless, seeing and visionless. 

Reptile mistress. 

Taking bread in her curved, gaping, toothless 

mouth. 
She has no qualm when she catches my finger in 

her steel overlapping gums. 
But she hangs on, and my shout and my shrinking 

are nothing to her, 

[ 30 ] 



LUI ET ELLE 

She does not even know she is nipping me with 

her curved beak. 
Snake-like she draws at my finger, while I drag 

it in horror away. 

Mistress, reptile mistress, 

You are almost too large, I am almost frightened. 

He is much smaller. 
Dapper beside her. 
And ridiculously small. 

Her laconic eye has an earthy, materialistic look, 
His, poor darling, is almost fiery. 

His wimple, his blunt-prowed face, 

His low forehead, his skinny neck, his long, 

scaled, striving legs. 
So striving, striving. 
Are all more delicate than she. 
And he has a cruel scar on his shell. 

Poor darling, biting at her feet, 
Running beside her like a dog, biting her earthy, 
splay feet, 

[ 31 ] 



TORTOISES 



Nipping her ankles. 

Which she drags apathetic away, though without 
retreating; into her shell. 



^t> 



Agelessly silent. 

And with a grim, reptile determination. 
Cold, voiceless age-after-age behind him, ser- 
pents' long obstinacy 
Of horizontal persistence. 

Little old man 

Scuffling beside her, bending down, catching his 
opportunity. 

Parting his steel-trap face, so suddenly, and seiz- 
ing her scaly ankle. 

And hanging grimly on, 

Letting go at last as she drags away. 

And closing his steel-trap face. 

His steel-trap, stoic, ageless, handsome face. 
Alas, what a fool he looks in this scuffle. 

And how he feels it ! 

The lonely rambler, the stoic, dignified stalker 
through chaos, 

[ 32 ] 



L U I E T ELI. E 

The inimune, the animate, 
Enveloped in isolation. 
Forerunner. 
Now look at him ! 

Alas, the spear is through the side of his isolation. 
His adolescence saw him crucified into sex. 
Doomed, in the long crucifixion of desire, to seek 

his consummation beyond himself. 
Divided into passionate duality, 
He, so finished and immune, now broken into 

desirous fragmentariness, 
Doomed to make an intolerable fool of himself 
In his effort toward completion again. 

Poor little earthy house-inhabiting Osiris, 

The mysterious bull tore him at adolescence into 

pieces. 
And he must struggle after reconstruction, igno- 

miniously. 

And so behold him following the tail 
Of that mud-hovel of his slowly-rambling spouse, 
Like some unhappy bull at the tail of a cow, 
But with more than bovine, grim, earth-dank 
persistence, 

[ 33 ] 



TORTOISES 

Suddenly seizing the ugly ankle as she stretches 

out to walk, 
Roaming over the sods, 

Or, if it happen to show, at her pointed, heavy tail 
Beneath the low-dropping back-board of her shell. 

Their two shells like doomed boats bumping, 

Hers huge, his small ; 

Their splay feet rambling and rowing like 

paddles, 
And stumbling mixed up in one another. 
In the race of love — 
Two tortoises, 
She huge, he small. 

She seems earthily apathetic. 

And he has a reptile's awful persistence. 

I heard a woman pitying her, pitying the Mere 

Tortue. 
While I, I pity Monsieur. 
"He pesters her and torments her," said the 

woman. 
How much more is he pestered and tormented, 

say I. 

[ 34 1 



LUI ET ELLE * 

What can he do? 

He is dumb, he is visionless, 

Conceptionless. 

His black, sad-lidded eye sees but beholds not 

As her earthen mound moves on, 

But he catches the folds of vulnerable, leathery 

skin. 
Nail-studded, that shake beneath her shell, 
And drags at these with his beak, 
Drags and drags and bites, 
A^Tiile she pulls herself free, and rows her dull 

mound along. 



86 



TORTOISE GALLANTRY 



TORTOISE GALLANTRY 

Making his advances 

He does not look at her, nor sniff at her, 

No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank. 



Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin 
That work beneath her while she sprawls along 
In her ungainly pace, 
Her folds of skin that work and row 
Beneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she 
moves. 

And so he strains beneath her housey walls 
And catches her trouser-legs in his beak 
Suddenly, or her skinny limb, 
And strange and grimly drags at her 
Like a dog, 

Only agelessly silent, with a reptile's awful per- 
sistency. 

[ 39 ] 



TORTOISES 

Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed. 
Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolation 
And doomed to partiality, partial being, 
Ache, and want of being, 
Want, 

Self -exposure, hard humiliation, need to add him- 
self on to her. 



Born to walk alone. 
Forerunner, 

Now suddenly distracted into this mazy side- 
track. 
This awkward, harrowing pursuit. 
This grim necessity from within. 

Does she know 

As she moves eternally slowly away? 

Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird 

flying in the dark against a window, 
All knowledgeless? 

The awful concussion, 

And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, 
follow, continue, 

[ 40 ] 



TORTOISE GALLANTRY 

Driven, after seons of pristine, fore-god-like 

singleness and oneness. 
At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron, 
Driven away from himself into her tracks, 
Forced to crash against her. 

Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile. 

Little gentleman, 

Sorry plight. 

We ought to look the other way. 

Save that, having come with you so far, 
We will go on to the end. 



[ 41 ] 



TORTOISE SHOUT 



TORTOISE SHOUT 

I thought he was dumb, 
I said he was dumb, 
Yet I've heard him cry. 

First faint scream, 

Out of life's unfathomable dawn, 

Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's 

dawning rim. 
Far, far off, far scream. 

Tortoise in extremis. 

Why were we crucified into sex? 

Why were we not left rounded off, and finished 

in ourselves. 
As we began. 
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone? 

A far, was-it-audible scream, 

Or did it sound on the plasm direct? 

[ 46 ] 



TORTOISES 

Worse than the cry of the new-born, 
A scream, 
A yell, 
A shout, 
A paean, 
A death-agony, 
A birth-cry, 
A submission. 

All tiny, tiny, far away, reptile under the first 
dawn. 

War-cry, triumph, acute-delight, death-scream 

reptilian. 
Why was the veil torn? 

The silken shriek of the soul's torn membrane? 
The male soul's membrane 
Torn with a shriek half music, half horror. 

Crucifixion. 

Male tortoise, cleaving behind the hovel-wall of 

that dense female, 
Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching 

out of the shell 
In tortoise-nakedness. 
Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, 

spread-eagle over her house-roof, 

[ 46 ] 



TORTOISE SHOUT 

And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved 

beneath her walls, 
Reaching and gripping tense, more reaching 

anguish in uttermost tension 
Till suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping 

like a jerking leap, and oh! 
Opening its clenched face from his outstretched 

neck 
And giving that fragile yell, that scream, 
Super-audible, 

From his pink, cleft, old-man's mouth, 
Giving up the ghost, 
Or screaming in Pentecost, receiving the ghost. 

His scream, and his moment's subsidence, 

The moment of eternal silence. 

Yet unreleased, and after the moment, the sud- 
den, startling jerk of coition, and at once 

The inexpressible faint yell — 

And so on, till the last plasm of my body was 
melted back 

To the primeval rudiments of life, and the secret. 

So he tups, and screams 

Time after time that frail, torn scream 

After each jerk, the longish interval, 

[ 47 ] 



TOR T,0 1 S E S 

The tortoise eternity, 
Agelong, reptilian persistence. 
Heart-throb, slow heart-throb, persistent for the 
next spasm. 

I remember, when I was a boy, 

I heard the scream of a frog, which was caught 

with his foot in the mouth of an up-starting 

snake ; 
I remember when I first heard bull-frogs break 

into sound in the spring ; 
I remember hearing a wild goose out of the throat 

of night 
Cry loudly, beyond the lake of waters; 
I remember the first time, out of a bush in the 

darkness, a nightingale's piercing cries and 

gurgles startled the depths of my soul; 
I remember the scream of a rabbit as I went 

through a wood at midnight ; 
I remember the heifer in her heat, blorting and 

blorting through the hours, persistent and 

irrepressible ; 
I remember my first terror hearing the howl of 

weird, amorous cats; 
I remember the scream of a terrified, injured 

horse, the sheet-lightning 

[ 48 ] 



TORTOISE SHOUT 

And running away from the sound of a woman in 

labor, something like an owl whooing, 
And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a 

lamb, 
The first wail of an infant, 
And my mother singing to herself, 
And the first tenor singing of the passionate 

throat of a young collier, who has long since 

drunk himself to death, 
The first elements of foreign speech 
On wild dark lips. 

And more than all these, 
And less than all these, 
This last. 

Strange, faint coition yell 
Of the male tortoise at extremity. 
Tiny from under the very edge of the farthest 
far-off horizon of life. 

The cross. 

The wheel on which our silence first is broken. 

Sex, which breaks up our integrity, our single 

inviolability, our deep silence 
Tearing a cry from us. 

[ 49 ] 



TORTOISES 

Sex, which breaks us into voice, sets us calling 
across the deeps, calling, calling for the com- 
plement. 

Singing, and calling, and singing again, being 
answered, having found. 

Torn, to become whole again, after long seeking 

for what is lost, 
The same cry from the tortoise as from Christ, 

the Osiris-cry of abandonment. 
That which is whole, torn asunder. 
That which is in part, finding its whole again 

throughout the universe. 



L 60 ] 



